‘The Three Enchanted Princes’: Ritual syntax and the Interpretation of fairytales

Helena Tužinská (Comenius) and Chris Knight (UCL) decode the fairytale 'The three enchanted princes', a very widespread 'animal suitor' story, in a unique Slovakian version. They will be speaking LIVE in the Daryll Forde Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, UCL Anthropology Dept. You can join us on ZOOM (ID 384 186 2174 Passcode Wawilak)

The fairy tale ‘The Three Enchanted Princes’ starkly contrasts a picture of nature as barren wilderness against an idealised image of fertility in the form of cultivated gardens and landscapes. The version we examine, first published in Slovakia in 1881, specifies fourteen days as the interval between spells, like several other recorded variants. What distinguishes these Slovak versions from the other widely distributed European variants is the stress on monthly periodicity of the enchantment and the references to hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Both the heroine’s (time-bound) and the hero’s (space-bound) adventures are discussed in light of the overthrow of the moon’s former centrality in favour of a new reliance on seasonality and hence on the sun.